Hi all,
With regards to our recent integration into the Fediverse, it has become evident that specific rules should be outlined regarding our conduct towards it and our place in it. As such, we are making provisional amendments to the Code of Conduct in specific regard to federation as we find our footing and stake our ground as a part of the wider Fediverse ecosystem. The amendments are as such, demarcated within the dividers:
Federation
In regards to the Fediverse, a dual-pronged approach should be assumed:
Local Communities
Conduct remains as previously outlined [in the Hexbear Code of Conduct], except:
- Users visiting Hexbear should be given breathing room to inquire in good-faith about topics that seem obvious to well-trodden leftists. Assume good faith in even the most obvious of questions, except in cases where a user is explicitly acting in a combative or unreasonable manner.
- Do not ping users from other federated instances with intent to goad or mock.
- Do not directly link to comments or posts of other federated instances on public posts with intent to goad or mock.
- Disengagement rules, whilst not amended, are thoroughly emphasized regarding visiting users.
Federated Instances
Assume the conduct outlined regarding local communities, as well as:
- When in a federated instance, their rules (and their code of conduct) apply.
- Allow instances their own space for discussion, if requested implicitly or explicitly. If said discussion regards this site or its users, you are allowed to discuss said discussion within the local purview (meaning, within a Hexbear community), with regards to the rules laid out prior.
- Conduct that is deemed untenably toxic to the Fediverse and Hexbear’s standing within it (by discretion of Hexbear moderation) may be subject to reprisal, regardless of whether it is explicitly outlined.
We're thankful to the moderation and admins of the instances federated with us for their patience as we carve out our own little hole within the Fediverse. And to our beautiful posters, thank you for bearing with us in this week where decades happen 
It's clear that the struggle session now is what role we want to take in Lemmyverse, and how much we're willing to change our site culture in pursuit of that.
Frankly I don't see the point of most of them. I've seen a good argument for being nice to Blahaj, but beyond that trying to enforce these rules just seems like a trap that most Hexbears will fall in to pretty quickly.
The culture and norms here are largely incompatible with other instances. Our normal posting behavior is viewed as overwhelming brigading by a number of other instances. Our attempts at good faith dialogue are rebuffed by deeply ignorant people unaware of their own indoctrination. At some point, for many people including myself, that results in a degree of frustration and heated tempers. And the admins of most instances seem to be completely on board with the distorted State Department version of history that we're trying to dismantle which likely mean it's a matter of time before they defed because we're SEESEEP apologist genocide denying tankies. We can't do anything against bad faith ignorance of that magnitude.
I've seen numerous complaints that our emoji culture is disruptive and "image spam". I theoretically could post without using emojis, but I wont. Giving up one of my favorite aspects of Hexbear to have frustrating conversations with extremely ignorant liberals isn't worth it. I'll stay home rather than engage with other instances.
A lot of people already think we're bots or paid agents of hostile governments. The same bad faith accusations that anything that disputes the official US version of reality is the work of machines and spies that we castigated on Reddit is all over the lemmyverse in force.
And, ultimately - The vast majority of these people are boring reddit liberals. Whatever changes we make we're making to cater to the people we despise for their hegemonic dominance of culture and society. Chapo and Hexbear were created as refuge from these people where we wouldn't have to deal with them, play in to their vile civility culture, hold back about saying what was really happening in the world, or follow "both sides" site rules that accommodated all kinds of reactionary scum as long as they toed the line on the rules.
What are we gaining from Federation? What's the upshot? What's the pay off? It's very nice having Lemmygrad and Lemmie.ml comrades here, and I understand the argument for staying federated with Blahaj, but beyond that I don't see Federation contributing anything, while we'll have to bend significantly on our core culture and indeed the purpose of this community to accommodate, literally, the liberals.
I remember back in the day when if your forum got raided, you would raid their forum, and you weren't able to successfully muster enough people to raid their forum, it was a skill issue. Raiding was a fact of life on the Interwebs. Absolutely nobody would honor your "pls no raiding" sign and people wouldn't cry if their raid accounts got banned. I absolutely hate this crying about bRiDgAtInG Redditism.
"But this isn't healthy for the fediversirino!" Look around you. Every instance is defedding from every other instance. Just look at how lemmy.world has defedded from that piracy instance with everyone just saying, "dude, just create two accounts for each instance." So, basically treating two lemmy instances like two forums without federation. The fediverse is already balkanizing, and it's going to be so fractured that within a year, there wouldn't be any sense to even conceive of a fediverse.
Smarter people here have already came to the conclusion before me that I am having right now: that federation is entirely overhyped and won't pan out in the way Ledditors think it would. Most likely, an instance would just federate with like 5 other instances, and the largest instance would eventually cannibalize the 5 smaller instances so you're stuck with a large active instance "federated" with a bunch of dead instances.
Yeah I think you've got it, and it'll be interesting to watch it continue to unfold. It's really funny how all these instances fear our posting power.
I love how any complaint about an instance is met with "it's shit, it's meant to be shit, if you don't like it here's the door".
Our normal posting behavior being interpreted as a swarm of brigading and bots has genuinely put a smile on my face. You're all amazing and your posting energy is fierce. Never stop posting
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That scene was brilliant for explaining one of the major obstacles facing revolutionary movements. For a "dumb action movie" it was so smart.
This is what bugs me so much. While I recognize that spamming PPB with the emoji bug right now is a problem, I feel like we shouldn't have to restrict our
energies. Would it be possible to have more admins put up something about our size and the fact that we're not brigading but just posters? I saw the lemm.ee meta post, and that admin at least acknowledges we aren't brigading.
From that thread:
Obviously perhaps a bit weak, but this kind of education could help some of the growing pains as well, since other instances probably see 10 of us
simultaneously and think it's a brigade when it's just our normal behavior. Also, the fact we don't have downvotes might be something that other instances should be aware of (i.e. we don't downvote and move on).
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Please let us know when they fix the emoji bug, BTW. I've been limiting my use on other instances out of respect for the bug (except on Lemmygrad, whose users all get a
from me), but I want to see our big beautiful emotes.
Also, when you fix it, make them bigger on hexbear k thanks!
Yeah I've always thought they were too small, can't even put a # in front of them to enlarge them anymore
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Almost all of them operate in bad faith. They are just looking for an excuse, and I don't see any problem with giving them that excuse if defederation is a foregone conclusion for them.
I don't understand, why are y'all trying to cater to them? they'll just come up with other shit or straight up lie, beehaw defederated from lemmygrad for "hatespeech", are you going to ban everyone from using the word cracker so they don't defed?
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they won't do that though, they'll say we're spreading hate speech or are comfortable with bigotry (i've seen this claim already several times)
they explained it right here. they want defederations to happen for clearly stated ideological reasons and not excuses.
but my point is that they won't actually give that as a reason, no matter how flimsy their excuse is. Beehaw originally defederated like a year ago because "lemmygrad was filling up server hardware and is making it too expensive to run" because they fucked up some setting on their server, and then later justified it that they're defederated from it for "hatespeech", there are instances that defed lemmygrad because it supposedly brigades, so unless the hexbear admins think they can curate behavior to be less aggressive than lemmygrad (I will be real they won't be able to) I don't understand why they should even try
meh, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. curtailing our worst excesses is for the best.
i mean if that's the intended goal frame it that way, why curtail the behavior now that federation has started? none of the behavior was considered bad before, but now that liberals are complaining about it, it's a problem?
we've always had a don't be hostile rule. it's just always been interpreted to only apply to leftists. we're now sharing space with others - so when we go into their spaces some moderation is the neighborly thing to do. like personally, I'm still going to dunk on libs, but I'm going to save the savagery for chuds/fash.
I don't think these rules imply we need to be civil with libs - if anyone says they do, I'll start dunking on them because that's liberalism. but pinging users into dunk tank threads or linking bad takes there is only going to strengthen accusations of brigading. even without that, pretty much every bad take gets replies from hexbears dunking on them anyway so it's not like anyone is getting away with bullshit scot free.
They're just going to lie and exaggerate anyways. I see value in making it so they have to be even more ridiculous with the lies and exaggerations, but folks should expect every lib instance to eventually defederate over "the commies were mean to me once" posts.
Liberals are actually more petty than commies and it's important to not overestimate them just because they cover it with normalized language.
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Might I suggest pinning the code of conduct for a while? I'm not sure how many people actually know it exists.
We're never going to dismantle anything if we can't even handle interacting with other Lemmy instances.
Posting isn't praxis
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By placating liberals, we ourselves become liberals